UK Government Says More Spying Needed 297
An anonymous reader writes "Our wonderful government here in the UK has decided we're not being surveilled enough, and agreed to spend £12 billion on a programme to monitor every Briton's phone calls, e-mails, and internet usage. According to various sources, upwards of £1 billion has already been spent on the uber-database. Rationale? Terrorism, of course (no prizes for guessing).
Needless to say, not everyone is as happy as Larry over this: Michael Parker pointed out how us Brits are being 'stalked.' I'm just looking forward to when the data gets lost."
Keyhole career. (Score:5, Insightful)
""Our wonderful government here in the UK has decided we're not being surveilled enough, and agreed to spend £12 billion on a programme to monitor every Briton's phone calls, e-mails, and internet usage."
With economies going the way they are. job security will be spying on each other.
Like violence (Score:2, Insightful)
Ah! (Score:4, Insightful)
It's about control not terrorism (Score:5, Insightful)
The UK had its own domestic terrorists for decades: the IRA. Yet the government did not feel that such pervasive monitoring was necessary. Now, largely because of something that happened 3000 miles away, the UK feels that such pervasive monitoring is necessary.
I say BS: every agency is wetting themselves hoping to get their hands on this data so that they can pursue their own petty agendas in the same way as RIPA powers have been used for trivial reasons.
Everyone has something to hide. Not necessarily illegal, but enough to coerce behavior.
I'll take the risk then! (Score:5, Insightful)
I have thought over it many times and, regarding myself, I have concluded: I would prefer to live freely and unobserved and someday die in a terrorist attack, than live in a "security" hell for all my life with cameras and RFIDs up my ass.
Put aside the fact that surveillance almost never stops a attack - only it helps find the burned-out guys.
And some semantics: How many of you walk in the street and feels ''terrorized''? On the other hand, how many of you feel terrorized by the fact that your every moment is on tape, and your personal data wanders in places you don't know?
a nation of Marvins. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:When I was a kid... (Score:4, Insightful)
Modern day Britain reminds me of the science fiction dystopia portrayed on the old British TV show The Prisoner [wikipedia.org].
It's sad and foreboding how social and technological dystopia's emerge from what was once only imaginative musings of science fiction writers.
The United Kingdom is now The Villiage (Score:5, Insightful)
And you're ALL Number 6.
Do you have the courage that Number 6 had? Will you fight back against Number 2?
Are you just "A number" or are you Free Men & Women?
The choice is yours.
Re:It's about control not terrorism (Score:3, Insightful)
The 2005 attacks which, I should point out, were NOT stopped by the near blanketed amount of cameras in the area. (Although it did accelerate the investigation as to who was involved after the fact)
Re:Keyhole career. (Score:5, Insightful)
With economies going the way they are. job security will be spying on each other.
Fear, what can't it do?
Re:Keyhole career. (Score:2, Insightful)
no, no, no. that's not how it works. they're no-bid contracts handed out to companies with close ties to, or have curried favor with, high position government official. and there's no such thing as cost "overruns" when it's a cost-plus contract. the more the contractor spends, the more they're paid. and with tax-payers footing the bill and no government oversight, what could possible go wrong?
Re:When I was a kid... (Score:3, Insightful)
Now ... not so much. Is it really like this? Cameras and eyes on you at all times?
If you have nothing to hide you can revel in the fact you are safe, or at the very least when you are victimized it will be preserved for posterity!
Abuse of power ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:It's about control not terrorism (Score:5, Insightful)
What's bizarre is that our government has such intrusive tendencies as to have a camera covering every stretch of the country yet also has such 'religious tolerance' that those who wish to wear a burqa [imcworldwide.org], which is effectively a personal tent, allowing them to avoid any kind of indentification, are free to do so. That's what I call an inconsistent set of beliefs. IMO, any group serious in their intent to monitor the population would not allow the monitored to so easily avoid their gaze.
Could this be the governemt being manipulated by security theatre experts?
SecurityAdvisors> Omg, we're running out of ponies!
Government> Aaaarghhh, Panic!
SecurityAdvisors> Never fear, our surveillance systems will save us. *cough* a bargain at £12 Billion"
Re:When I was a kid... (Score:3, Insightful)
I live in Sweden, and it seems that the law that was supposed to be passed has been changed to be a bit less draconian.
But honestly, I don't think there is almost any point in trying to do anything about the actions, or symptoms, of terrorists and terrorism.
Increased security and surveillance simply doesn't help at all. It is to easy for them to just do something else. The possibilities are virtually endless.
Granted, some of the captured people that they claim was trying to commit these kinds of crimes probably would have carried them through...but if the society they had grown up in had been less insane, they probably would never have considered these actions to begin with.
The ONLY thing that can be done is to do something about the causes of it.
Instead, our governments are busy BEING the causes of it. Utterly cluless.
Re:I'll take the risk then! (Score:3, Insightful)
You say that but just wait until you are assaulted by the police in full view of their moveable cameras capable of number plate identification after the police have asked for the cameras to be trained on their position. When you request the camera footage, you'll realise that actually noone in the UK is filmed at all :S
Re:I'll take the risk then! (Score:5, Insightful)
Amen. Once in a while you wish Slashdot had a golden +10 moderation, and this is one of those times.
"Terrorism", when looked at number of deaths per year, is basically a total non-issue. How many people have been killed by terrorism in the UK in the last 50 years? Would anyone support a program where you spend _millions_ per prevented death, knowing that far more deaths could have been prevented by spending the same money to prevent something with far higher mortality rates - say, by improving traffic safety, or by reducing the number of smokers?
Terrorism is such political bullshit. Sure, some people get killed (and I grief for them), and we do need to be careful - but we should not, under any circumstance, change our entire way of life, the entire structure of our civilisation, just because a bearded monkey in a cave in Afghanistan got a little upset with us.
There is no al queada (oh sure, there are some people taking that name, but there is no Dr. Blofeld-style, centrally led organisation hell-bent on destroying western civilisation. It is all opportunistic, people sharing a banner that was largely _invented_ by the US). And bin Laden, if he is still alive at all, is a sick, dirty old man living under extremely poor conditions in a cave somewhere in Afghanistan or Pakistan, and only a threat to himself.
Stop the fear already.
Re:I'll take the risk then! (Score:5, Insightful)
Stop the fear already.
Stop what fear? I don't know ANYONE who is fearful of terrorists, or being caught in terrorist acts. I don't even know anyone who knows anyone who is scared of this BS. As near as I can tell, it's 100% political propaganda that nameless people are scared and want more big-brother style "protection". People want more self reliance and an honest right to defend themselves when the need arises... be it from terrorist, thugs, or the government.
A challenge to all Slashdotters: If anyone can tell me of people - either you, or people that you personally know - who are genuinely afraid of these things happening, post your stories now:
Re:Abuse of power ? (Score:1, Insightful)
Opportunity cost (Score:5, Insightful)
So, to fight this, we have a £1 billion database, a £12 billion surveillance program, and an ID cards scheme costing £18 billion. £31 billion for fighting those 500 deaths, or £62 million per death presumably prevented.
Perhaps if this £31 billion was spent on subsidising healthy food or teaching kids to cook properly and healthily, we could see a drop in the several thousand heart disease related deaths each year. If it was spent on road safety perhaps we could see a drop on the 3000 or so people killed on the roads each year.
Why are we worrying about terrorism?
It would be great for stalkers (Score:2, Insightful)
Just get a back door, or a government job, and stalk victims with more ease and comfort.
As I'm not from the UK, I have to wonder what sort of stalking laws this would break.
The government of course being exempt from them.
Mod parent up! (Score:3, Insightful)
This demonstrates how the laws can and will be used.
It justifies those who believe that when laws are proposed you should think of how it could be abused, not just how it could be used.
"The Treasury released a document to Parliament yesterday showing it used sections of the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 to take control of the bank's assets, saying in the statement the bank's collapse may harm the U.K. economy. "
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601102&sid=aXjIA5NzyM5c [bloomberg.com]
Re:It's about control not terrorism (Score:5, Insightful)
The UK had its own domestic terrorists for decades: the IRA. Yet the government did not feel that such pervasive monitoring was necessary. Now, largely because of something that happened 3000 miles away, the UK feels that such pervasive monitoring is necessary.
I disagree - I don't think the change is that monitoring is suddenly *necessary*, more that it's suddenly *possible*.
Decades ago we didn't have the technology to routinely capture, store and process this information. Decades ago, the public might not have stood for it.
Now we have the technology. September 11th didn't make monitoring necessary, but did make it politically acceptable.
Why do governments build such systems? Because they can.
In every country ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Unfortunately most people fail to see the connection between lists and any danger. The lists are being made to influence people who speaking out against the ones in power. But most people fail to see the danger of giving the power seekers ever more data to mine on everyone. Knowledge is power and the ones in power seek the use that knowledge to prevent people standing against their point of view.
With ever more detailed lists on peoples views, soon we end up with people fearful of what they say on the phone and in emails, for fear of their views could even just risk being taken out of context and seen in any way critical of the people in power. At that point, the ones in power are influencing people directly.
At that point, we live in a police state, where freedom is gone and replaced by fear of the ones in power. Problem is, we are getting there now, and from here on out, its simply a matter of consolidation of ever more detailed data mining.
The central reason why centuries ago votes were made in secret, was to prevent the ones in power, from seeking to influence the voters. Yet the power seekers are forever seeking to game the system to gain ever more information on peoples opinions. Now the ones in power are building automated systems to influence people.
Throughout history its been shown time and time again that the ones in power become ever more corrupt over time without any feedback on how they are behaving. Its been show so many times through history.
Most people don't realise the game people in power are playing. People in power are not so interested in individuals. The ones in power are interested in adding everyone to different lists so they can then control and profiling groups of people, so they can then use divide and conquer tactics, to break groups of people up. The goal is that the fragmented groups cannot then stand and oppose the point of view of the ones in power. That is why they data mine.
The lessons of history have not been learned by enough people. Looks like the world is seeking to repeat the mistakes of the past. Freedom and democracy are constantly undermined by a minority of people in power for their own gain. Its just a matter of time and how far we are going to let them all game the system to push the excesses ever more unfairly in their favour. After all, its not as if they are robbing hundreds of billions of tax payers money to keep their rich lifestyles while millions risk loosing everything.
Anyway, if the millions of people can't buy bread, then let them eat cake. ... My point is, the names in history change and the names of their ideologies change. But what remains is basic human psychology and that doesn't change. The lack of empathy of the ones in power over their powerless minions never changes. For all their words, its only their actions which count and millions now face loosing their jobs and millions are treated unfairly by the ones in power.
In such a world, its no surprise that the ones in power would want to watch their minions very closely. After all, people could start to complain its getting all to unfair. But we cannot have that. We need ever more laws to protect the ones in power and ever more laws to keep the minions down and away from power.
The world will never change until everyone worldwide realises that people who constantly seek power over others have a recognisable cluster B personality disorder. All cluster B personality disorders are ultimately driven by fear. And the ones with the disorder constantly seek to control that fear and control everyone around them based on their fear. (There are multiple fears, two examples are lack of attention and the other is fear of lack of power. The attention seekers want more attention (they were deprived of parental attention as children. The ones who want power seek to prevent anyone ever having power over them again, the way they were treated unfairly as children)... The very nature of seeking power over others, means that person seeks to push other
Re:It's about control not terrorism (Score:3, Insightful)
the 2005 London bombings which killed 52 people and injured 700.
52 lives. In 2005 there were 271,000 road deaths in Great Britain [statistics.gov.uk]. How much money was spent per head trying to reduce that, compared to the huge sums trying to reduce the number 52? I could also bring up a few medical statistics.
Why is it that a small number of deaths by one means merits spending of several orders of magnitude more than other causes of death?
Re:I'll take the risk then! (Score:1, Insightful)
Which Briton would get the title 'Chief Bugger'?
I'll bet 12 Billion quid tipped into NHS would prevent death and save more lives with more certainty than a pie in the sky lamebrain idea. Infections, shoddy cancer treatment, late diagnosis.
No amount of bugging will reveal intent. In WWII they had no computers, but rounded up and executed spies in about 24 hours - because the community and the local bobby identified suspects that quick. If there is a real need, they will go back to that proven method.
Re:In every country ... (Score:4, Insightful)
The ones in power are interested in adding everyone to different lists so they can then control and profiling groups of people, so they can then use divide and conquer tactics, to break groups of people up. The goal is that the fragmented groups cannot then stand and oppose the point of view of the ones in power. That is why they data mine.
The US and the UK both have governments with powerful spying ability, and yet both countries only have 2 political parties that are likely to win general elections.. so I don't really get your reasoning on this. Seems to me like if this were happening, we'd have a lot more competition going on in politics. Perhaps your reasoning is that it will happen if we're not careful? Personally I'd be quite happy for people to be thinking for themselves more and not just splitting every issue into diametrically opposed viewpoints.
That would be a clever way to operate if you are in power and want to keep it though - creating distrust among the opposition so that they split into groups. Then they have less voting power. Just saying "we are better, vote for us" - as politicians and their fanboys so often seem to be doing - doesn't really get results very quickly.
No more revolutions (Score:2, Insightful)
The authorities (both government and corporate, if there is really a difference) now has such a technological ability to watch us and to manipulate the opinions of at least the weakest 80=90% of us, there could very well be no more mass uprisings, ever.
Too many people are all about themselves, their idiotic quest for acquisition and a pitiful concept of personal identity sold to them and a million other fools by professional marketers.
If you ever suggested the idea of violent revolution to one of the sheeple, and they agreed to it, they would simply say 'ok, you go first'.
Its a fairly hopeless situation right now.
Re:It's about control not terrorism (Score:4, Insightful)
Absolutely. If I recall correctly the security services had, by 1974, infiltrated the IRA to the point where they knew who all the main players were and at one point actually had an informant at the highest level of the IRA council. The decision to "take them down" however was vetoed because they knew it would be a bloodbath with a high possibility of collateral damage, embarrassing for the UK and politically disastrous with the US.
But, what it did prove is that there's no substitute for someone on the inside, which I suspect is what every criminal and real terrorist will be aiming for in the offices that handle the information and ID data of every UK citizen. Besides, all that will happen is that that real terrorists won't use email. phones etc., for planning their terrorising because at the end of the day, planning a terrorist attack is not the sort of thing that requires instantaneous communication. They're in no rush as long as there's a big bang at the end of it.
Personally, as a child of the sixties who lived through the cold war and the IRA terror campaign I still can't reconcile current government behaviour with the idea that we were the good guys because in the eastern bloc, you were watched wherever you went, your phones could be tapped and your personal mail could be intercepted by a government that used the defence of the state from the evil decadent westerners as its justification. At least in East Germany they managed to keep peoples personal records securely locked away in a basement.
At the next election my questions to the doorstep candidate will be "Will you/your party scrap ID cards, the universal snooping database, the retention of innocent people's DNA, PFI and dumbaarse IT projects that will cost 300 new schools worth before it becomes obvious they crap? If the answer is yes they get the vote. The economy isn't too much of a concern as this lot have screwed up so badly it'd take a real dickhead to do any worse. At the last election our Labour MP had a majority of about a 100. I don't think he'll be back next time.
Re:Money no object (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Call forth the militias! Viva la revolution! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:In every country ... (Score:1, Insightful)
"both countries only have 2 political parties"
Its not about the specific views of political parties, its about the underlying nature of seeking power over others. The two parties are simply an emergent result of the underlying power seeking nature. Throughout history this behaviour is repeated. ... "the names in history change and the names of their ideologies change. But what remains is basic human psychology and that doesn't change." ... Its about the psychology of power seeking and how ... "The very nature of seeking power over others, means that person seeks to push others lower than them. If this is left unchecked for too long, then they will push things ever more unfairly out of balance. This is why freedom and democracy are constantly undermined by a minority of people in power for their own gain."
Political power acts like a natural selection process where only the most extreme fight to the top jobs. Cluster B Personality disorders have an advantage is seeking power, as they are so driven to seek power. Yet their drive is driven by an underlying continuous fear or fears. "the ones with the disorder constantly seek to control that fear and control everyone around them based on their fear"
Which brings us back to the core problem, ... "The very nature of seeking power over others, means that person seeks to push others lower than them. If this is left unchecked for too long, then they will push things ever more unfairly out of balance. This is why freedom and democracy are constantly undermined by a minority of people in power for their own gain."
The process of political power acts like a machine that tries to stop the feedback that would otherwise self correct the extremes that its capable of being pushed to. This is why we end up with police states. Its why "With ever more detailed lists on peoples views, soon we end up with people fearful of what they say on the phone and in emails, for fear of their views could even just risk being taken out of context and seen in any way critical of the people in power. At that point, the ones in power are influencing people directly. At that point, we live in a police state, where freedom is gone and replaced by fear of the ones in power. Problem is, we are getting there now, and from here on out, its simply a matter of consolidation of ever more detailed data mining."
Re:Call forth the militias! Viva la revolution! (Score:2, Insightful)
"The scandal is, there is no scandal"
Do you really think that the American people would be allowed guns, even by the Republicans, if the government had even the slightest doubt in its ability to keep the population ignorant.
Americans are allowed more weapons by their government simply because they are more gullible.
Re:It's about control not terrorism (Score:3, Insightful)
They did try internment of IRA suspects, but soon found out that it helped IRA recruitment. Yet the current bunch of idiots dosn't appear to understand this, constantly trying to bring back the same idea by increments. (Whilst sending out the message that the police are competent to investigate any crime except "terrorism".)
Now, largely because of something that happened 3000 miles away, the UK feels that such pervasive monitoring is necessary.
It also happened over 7 years ago...
I say BS:
It's probably enough that if you collected the methane from its decomposition the UK would have enough "natural gas" for at least the comming winter
every agency is wetting themselves hoping to get their hands on this data so that they can pursue their own petty agendas in the same way as RIPA powers have been used for trivial reasons.
IMHO once this happens the RIPA abuses are no longer likely to look so trivial.
Everyone has something to hide. Not necessarily illegal, but enough to coerce behavior.
Or that they wish hidden from criminals.
Re:Opportunity cost (Score:3, Insightful)
Why are we worrying about terrorism?
We aren't. We are worried about unjustified and unjustifiable governmental intrusion into our private and public lives. Governments aren't worried about terrorism either, but they want us to think they are.
Re:It's about control not terrorism (Score:3, Insightful)
its just 52 because UK government is spending so much on homeland security.
And I grow daffodils in my garden to stop elephants nesting in the trees. I know that this works because I don't have any elephants in the trees.
I am sorry: your argument holds no water at all.
Re:Panopticon in the UK (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem with all this is that the government uses fairness in order to justify this kind of system and to a large extent it's correct. Rich and poor alike are caught on camera, booked and fined automatically and without bias but with enough cameras no-one escapes the fair hand of robotic justice.
BUT, and this is a but the size of John Prescott's, I suspect that part of what makes the interface between state and citizen tolerable to the masses is the little victories that you score over the Man once in a while. Ask someone whose served a long prison sentence how they coped with losing the ability to do what they damn well liked when they like and they'll tell you that it's the little successes like getting an extra pack of ciggies smuggled in or pinching food from the kitchen or just taking the piss and getting away with it. In the same way as prisoners surrender their freedom, society puts restrictions on those living in it and on the whole, this is accepted as reasonable, e.g. the English agree not to possess firearms and in exchange the state, via the police, provide protection to ensure you don't need to. However, if you are on an empty motorway doing 85mph in a well maintained, modern car does it really matter? A copper who pulls you up could give you a warning based on his judgement that you were in control of your vehicle and weren't behaving like an arsehole. Equally, does it matter if, on a Sunday morning, you stop outside a newsagents and pop in to get a paper without feeding the meter; not really, yet a camera/computer logs the offence and a fixed fine is produced, packed and posted.
All the time this is going on people drive like complete idiots at below the speed limit and get away with it. Burglars go unchased as the police turn out and issue you a piece of paper to give to the insurance company without really investigating and kids can roam the streets at night behaving like little shits because they know the Police are too rushed off their feet to turn up unless there's a risk to life.
So long as this goes on, and drivers only interaction with the Police is via a brown envelope, the public's appreciation of their efforts on the road will be erroded and as camera based surveillance is increasingly applied to petty infractions of badly drafted and over zealously enforced rules, the publics respect for the law will be similarly damaged.
Up until recently, the man had a face and he could make a reasoned judgement as to whether your actions were deserving of a warning, a caution or arrest. In the UK, the man has become a faceless electronic beaurocrat, a fact alluded to in a DVLA advert where the DVLA's computer apparently takes the form of a 2001 style black monolith which stalks drivers who failed to pay their road tax. The gist of the ad is that a) there's no escape and b) your car can be seized and crushed on the spot, no argument, no reasoning and most importantly, no mercy. Where this leaves us humans is unsure but I've got a horrible feeling that Demolition Man is the template being worked to.
Freedom is the opportunity to take the piss or screw up once in a while as long as it doesn't cause hurt or damage to those around you and if your willing to take the consequences if it does. Take that away and you may as may as well be in prison.